Ever seen a lost goat? When a goat thinks it is lost, it runs around in a panic, screaming madly for the herd. I've seen goats step around the barn, lose line of sight on the other goats, and run around like this for fifteen minutes before figuring out the herd is only a few feet away. The herd ignores the panicked goat entirely, unless the lost goat is young enough for its mama to care. As a lost goat, where better to find other goats than on the seemingly endless plain of the blogosphere?

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Why bother to save?

The Wall Street Journal has an article about 2 families that have abandoned their mortgages to rent in the same community that they once owned. They've used the increases in their incomes to "buy season tickets to Disneyland, ... take a Carnival cruise to Mexico in March, ... and [one of them takes his] girlfriend out to dinner more frequently." He also "kept his black BMW 6 Series coupe, which has payments of about $700 a month."

My first thought is that they are living in a fantasy land, but my second thought is that maybe I am. When we're all in retirement, these people won't have any savings. And they have every expectation that the government will finance their lifestyle with Social Security and Medicaid. Since their current payments are being spent today, they'll have to "tax the rich" to fiance this system. If I spend my lifetime saving frugally, I will probably be among "the rich," at least before I start to draw down my retirement savings. So these grasshoppers will be clamoring to take all the food we ants have put by. And current events give me every indication that government departments at every level will be happy to do so, and never understand why they are destroying the economy in the process. Remind me why I'm being frugal again?